1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to automatic dial telephones, and more particularly, to an automatic dial telephone for automatically dialing numbers by speech recognition or a manual operation.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In recent years, with the improvement in recognition rate in a voice recognition unit, a telephone capable of automatically dialing numbers in respone to voice command has been put into practice (for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Gazette No. 81152/1987).
For example, as a voice recognition processing method in such an automatic dial telephone, a two-step recognition processing method has been generally employed in which the name of a called party is recognized in the first step and a command word such as "CANCEL" or "DIAL" is recognized in the second step.
More specifically, the name of a called party spoken by a user is recognized by speech recognition, and the results of this recognition are displayed by visual or audible means. At this display, the user inputs a command word for confirmation "DIAL" when the result of the recognition of the name of the called party is correct. If this inputted voice is recognized by the telephone as the command word for confirmation, a telephone number of the called party is dialled.
On the other hand, when the result of the recognition of the name of the called party is not correct, the user inputs a command word for cancellation "CANCEL". If this inputted voice is recognized by the telephone as the command word for cancellation, the automatic dial telephone returns to a wait state in which the user must the name of the called party.
The above described voice recognition processing method has the disadvantage in that the user must input the command word for cancellation and repeat the name of called party every time the name of the called party is erroneously recognized, thereby imposing a large burden on the user.
Such errors are liable to occur due to external noise because the name of the called party, and the command words are inputted by voice. This possibility is high, particularly if the automatic dial telephone is being used in a vehicle such as a car.